Humanitarian organisations helping Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh said on Wednesday they need $434 million over the next six months to help up to 1.2 million people, most of them children, in dire need of life-saving assistance.

Two weeks since the Burmese government pledged to begin a process for the return of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees who have fled to Bangladesh, questions about the practicality of a mass repatriation loom large.

A top Burmese official appealed on Monday for democracy in the country to be given “a chance to survive” amid international anger over a military campaign against Rohingya Muslims that the United Nations has described as ethnic cleansing.

Bangladesh opens talks with neighbouring Burma on Monday with the aim of securing the return home of more than half a million Rohingya Muslim refugees from Burma, most of whom have arrived since late August.

Two senior Burmese government officials have delivered aid to a remote Rohingya Muslim village, and guaranteed residents’ safety, after they were cut off and threatened by hostile Arakanese Buddhist neighbours, one of the officials said.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday called on countries to suspend providing weapons to Burma over violence against Rohingya Muslims until the military puts sufficient accountability measures in place.

International aid groups in Burma have urged the government to allow free access to Arakan State, where an army offensive has sent 480,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh but hundreds of thousands remain cut off from food, shelter and medical care.

Burma has sent a list of hundreds of names of suspected terrorists to the Bangladeshi government, and is seeking to have those individuals detained for their alleged involvement in deadly attacks last month by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army in Arakan State, according to a senior Burmese government official.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will publicly brief the Security Council on Thursday on violence in Burma, which he has described as ethnic cleansing, after seven countries on the 15-member body requested the meeting.

Muslim refugees seeking shelter in Bangladesh from “unimaginable horrors” in Burma face enormous hardship and risk a dramatic deterioration in circumstances unless aid is stepped up, the head of the UN refugee agency said on Monday.

Burmese government forces found on Sunday the bodies of 28 Hindu villagers who authorities suspected were killed by Muslim insurgents last month, at the beginning of a spasm of violence that has sent 430,000 Muslim Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh.

Relief agencies struggling to reach hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims displaced by strife in northwestern Burma are facing rising hostility from ethnic Arakanese Buddhists who accuse the United Nations and foreign aid groups of only helping Muslims.

The United States wants Burma to take urgent action to end violence in Arakan State, where a military offensive has created a crisis that could jeopardise its economic and political transition, a US official said on Friday.

Hundreds of Buddhists in Burma tried to block a shipment of aid to Muslims in Arakan State, where the United Nations has accused the military of ethnic cleansing, with a witness saying protesters threw petrol bombs before police dispersed them by firing into the air.

UN investigators have started collecting testimony from fleeing Rohingya Muslims pointing to human rights violations by Burma’s military and security forces, the head of the fact-finding mission said on Tuesday.

A lawyer for two Burmese journalists detained in Bangladesh while reporting on the influx of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Burma said on Monday he had been denied access to them amid concern over their well-being.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh could die due to a lack of food, shelter and water, given the huge numbers fleeing violence in Burma, an aid agency warned on Sunday, as authorities began moving people to camps to streamline the distribution of help.

Burma said on Friday a visiting US official would not be allowed to go to a region where violence has triggered an exodus of nearly 400,000 Rohingya Muslims that the United Nations has branded a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

The US Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday he had spoken with Aung San Suu Kyi and that she said she was working to get aid to the Muslim areas in Arakan State that were affected by violence.

If there’s one thing that unites Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the army that once tried to crush her, and the majority of people in mostly Buddhist Burma, it is their vehement dislike of Rohingya Muslims, seen as a threat to national security.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council on Wednesday urged Burmese authorities to end violence against the majority-Buddhist country’s Rohingya Muslims that has forced some 400,000 people to flee to Bangladesh.

Burma’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, facing outrage over ethnic violence that has forced about 370,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh, will not attend the upcoming UN General Assembly because of the crisis, her office said on Wednesday.

Despite the deportation of Pakistani journalists Aamir Liaquat Husain and Waqar Zaka late last week, a Burmese immigration official insists that the two men are welcome to return to Burma — provided that their travel itineraries are properly laid out.

Pressure mounted on Burma on Tuesday to end violence that has sent more than 300,000 Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh, with the United States calling for the protection of civilians and Bangladesh seeking international help to handle the crisis.

The United Nations’ top human rights official on Monday slammed Burma for conducting a “cruel military operation” against Rohingya Muslims in Arakan State, branding it “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

Burma on Sunday rebuffed a ceasefire declared by Muslim Rohingya insurgents to enable the delivery of aid to thousands of displaced people in the violence-wracked state of Arakan, declaring simply that it did not negotiate with terrorists.

An alarming and unprecedented influx of 270,000 Rohingya have sought refuge in Bangladesh over the past two weeks from violence in Burma, the UN refugee agency said on Friday, a dramatic jump in the total as new pockets of people are found.